Президентська Росія перед викликами модернізації: соціально-політичний аспект

The article investigates the historical background of Russia’s socio-political transformation in the age of presidential republic, the Russian society’s present state and modernization prospects. Since the Horde Russia would be effected by the oriental despotism. The Russian modernization historically took place under the Western civilization’s influence but its instruments were mostly despotic and essentially anti-European. The Russian historical drama is that the social base of its modernization had been exterminated during the Bolshevik Revolution and Stalin’s dictatorship, and by now, in the train of the ongoing post-communist transformations, is still in germ. In contrast to the American Great Power doctrine where democracy serves as an important tool, Putin’s Russia has chosen the absolute priority of state and corporate interests over rights, freedoms and interests of its citizens. The author concludes that the fundamental problems and challenges, which had confronted the Russian modernization a quarter century ago, have remained unresolved. The most important of them are the key political actors’ unwillingness to act within the democratic rules, the values foundation friability, the lack of democratic consciousness and political culture. Since the annexation of Crimea and the start of the hybrid war in Donbas Russia’s socio-political transformation has found clear imperial meanings and would rely henceforth on the Eurasian space’ resource self-sufficiency with the strictly authoritarian state ideology and elements of the mobilization economy.